Interactive Fiction/Text Adventures (and their engines)

[juv3nal]

Just a heads up, Porpentine's latest is amazing.

http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/tycoon/crime.html

You'll need this: http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/tycoon/nfo.png

 

And you should also check out the earlier Howling Dogs if you somehow missed it: http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/howlingdogs/howlingdogs.html#2o

[shammack]

Just a heads up, Porpentine's latest is amazing.

 

I can't think of a way to ask this that doesn't sound super-snarky, but I genuinely want to know: what about this is amazing?

[juv3nal]

I guess your mileage may vary, but if you haven't played it to completion it's bound up in spoilery kind of stuff. I mean telling you wouldn't necessarily entirely ruin the experience, but it would lessen its effectiveness.

Just on an immediate level, there is the surreal/absurd stuff that I find charming in a lot of her work, but there's another more personal layer to this one in particular that reveals itself as you play through to the end.

 

edit:

Beyond that, the writing is just really good IMO.

 

Here are some cherry picked IGN.COM style box quotes from my metafilter post about it (which ends up being somewhat spoilery, the quotes I've picked below are not):

 

"Ayep. That was worth finishing. Holy hell."

"God, what a great game. Just a great freaking game."

"Done. That was the best-written game I have ever played."

"The most artful games these days are made by those who have the most to say to a world that doesn't really listen. I liked this more than I can accurately describe. I'll be sharing this with my friends."

"Just (finally) finished it. Still trying to collect myself. Wow."

"Awesome game, unbelievable gut punch of an ending."

"Gah, that was killer. Really powerful. Hats off."

[clyde]

Yeah, I think it's broken. I keep getting something that looks like some twine code " $20000 is $cash eq"

[juv3nal]

I had that when I tried it on my iphone/mobile safari but it worked fine in windows/firefox.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I cry at the drop of a hat, so you have to scale down all my tears by like 80% to hit what a normal person is like, but I definitely cried like a baby at the end of Porpentine's game - well worth playing.

[shammack]

The idea of getting to end of the game is baffling to me because I have no idea what the goal even is. When I played it I just wandered around a bit and clicked through a lot of overwrought, pretentious nonsense until I was insta-killed for desecrating something, and I welcomed the opportunity to stop playing. It made me feel old and confused and grumpy.

[Twig]

The idea of getting to end of the game is baffling to me because I have no idea what the goal even is. When I played it I just wandered around a bit and clicked through a lot of overwrought, pretentious nonsense until I was insta-killed for desecrating something, and I welcomed the opportunity to stop playing. It made me feel old and confused and grumpy.

This was my experience except that it didn't make me feel old confused and grumpy, it made me feel like I'd wasted my time.

 

When I started, I wanted to get to the end, but it was so nonsensical that I lost all desire five minutes in.

[malkav11]

There are a lot of deaths in the game. It doesn't matter, they're just experiences to have. You just pop right back up again in the same gamestate. If you don't like her writing, though, I guess you won't appreciate it. Personally I thought it was fantastic.

[Twig]

It wasn't the death that bothered me. It was the pointlessness of the whole thing.

 

Space mutant bees or whatever had the same effect. It just feels like randomness for the sake of randomness. Maybe there is something deeper in there, but it's so off-putting that I stop caring almost immediately every time I decide to give it another chance. Which is weird for me to say, 'cause I love randomness for the sake of randomness. Maybe it's because there's allegedly supposed to be something else to it, and I'm looking for it and it's not there. But whatever, I guess. Can't like everything.

[juv3nal]

The idea of getting to end of the game is baffling to me because I have no idea what the goal even is.

I feel like you're either being facetious here or not giving the game a fair shake. If you pick guide, then tips, before starting a new game it says 'save a million dollars to win the game'.

Even if you miss that, there is a an area in the game that is explicitly gated off until you've accumulated a million dollars. Beyond which, the title of the game is "Ultra Business Tycoon III" so a reasonable conclusion would be that the goal is to earn money. None of which is to say that you have to like the game, but "no idea what the goal is" really?!?

[shammack]

Yes, really. I didn't pick guide, I just started a new game. Then I died without finding the area you're talking about. And the title (to the extent that I thought about it at all, which wasn't much) I just figured was probably some sort of ironic joke (I'm guessing there is no Ultra Business Tycoon I or II). Maybe I didn't give the game a fair shake, but I played it for longer than it engaged me and it didn't give me any reason to want to come back.

 

 

It wasn't the death that bothered me. It was the pointlessness of the whole thing.

 

Space mutant bees or whatever had the same effect. It just feels like randomness for the sake of randomness. Maybe there is something deeper in there, but it's so off-putting that I stop caring almost immediately every time I decide to give it another chance. Which is weird for me to say, 'cause I love randomness for the sake of randomness. Maybe it's because there's allegedly supposed to be something else to it, and I'm looking for it and it's not there. But whatever, I guess. Can't like everything.

 

I was thinking about this when I played Kentucky Route Zero. I mostly enjoyed that game, but it's basically just a text adventure with a really nice presentation layer on top of it, and the whole time I kept thinking that if it were just the text, I'd probably like it a lot less and maybe find it kind of insufferable, because I was pretty sure the surreal stuff, while sometimes amusing in itself, wasn't going to end up meaning anything. The few minutes of this game that I played felt like what I'd imagined that would be like: just aimlessly interacting with objects and getting responses that don't make much sense. (That said, I found the writing in Kentucky Route Zero much more readable and interesting than this.)

 

People are talking about how effective the end of this game is, so I guess in this case it does end up amounting to something, but the part I played was so off-putting that I can't see myself ever having the patience to get that far.

[Twig]

It's true, KRZ is similarly meandering, but it's so beautiful and I love the writing.

 

Whereas this is text and I hate the writing.

[juv3nal]

Yes, really. I didn't pick guide, I just started a new game. Then I died without finding the area you're talking about.

 

This is the first screen where you have more than 1 thing you can click on after character creation:

 

Aside from randomly dying due to picking the "randomly generated" option in character creation, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to die before the game shows you "$20000. Still not enough"

[TychoCelchuuu]

What I find odd is that this game is like, ten billion times less intimidating than the simplest traditional video game. All you do is click on words - it's impossible to lose, impossible to get stuck except in the sense that you can't remember which words you haven't clicked on yet, and impossible to have your progress blocked by a lack of reaction time, insufficient strategic prowess, bad puzzle solving skills, or any of the dozens of other things that turn most normal people away from all but the simplest video games. Anyone who can read English and click on a hyperlink can beat this the game. My mom could play and enjoy this game.

Compare that to something like, for instance, The Last of Us or Bioshock Infinite. Even on the easiest difficulty, the majority of my friends and family would probably get stuck multiple times in those games, and likely never beat them even if they wanted to, just because stuff like "navigate this 3d environment" or "shoot these people before they kill you" requires all sorts of button presses, timed reactions, hand-eye coordination feats, and so on. And yet, it's with Twine games that I see the most reports of gamers getting fed up and quitting as soon as they find the slightest excuse.

This isn't to slight any of you who abandoned the game - I'd never shame any of my friends for quitting Bioshock Infinite 5 minutes in because they can't figure out what the "open door" button is or because they got lost in an alley, fell off the side of the world, and respawned somewhere that didn't look familiar. Stuff can be hard for people and there's nothing wrong with just abandoning ship at the first sight of something that's unfamiliar or not effortlessly and instantly surmountable. I just find it strange that gamers, who put up such intricate requirements on their abilities just to get through your basic video game because there's supposed to be a really cool Winter level later on or the ending is really sweet, give up so easily on a game that is just hyperlinks.

Like, shammack skipped the guide and almost instantly gave up on death. Imagine skipping the tutorial in any other video game then giving up the first time you die. You'd never beat a game! You'd be fucked! You wouldn't know any of the controls or anything.

[shammack]

Compare that to something like, for instance, The Last of Us or Bioshock Infinite. Even on the easiest difficulty, the majority of my friends and family would probably get stuck multiple times in those games, and likely never beat them even if they wanted to, just because stuff like "navigate this 3d environment" or "shoot these people before they kill you" requires all sorts of button presses, timed reactions, hand-eye coordination feats, and so on. And yet, it's with Twine games that I see the most reports of gamers getting fed up and quitting as soon as they find the slightest excuse.

 

In those other games, people are willing to continue because there's something in those interactions that is mechanically satisfying or interesting or enjoyable in some way, or that makes you think you have the potential to succeed if you had a little more practice or dexterity or whatever. In a Twine game, all you're doing is reading and clicking on links, so if you're not interested in the text, there is literally nothing else. When you die, all you can do is start over and read that same text again, and maybe this time you'll randomly click on a word that doesn't kill you. That's not an appealing prospect.

 

At any rate, I didn't quit because I died, I quit because the game wasn't presenting me with anything that interested me. Death was just a convenient stopping point.

[Twig]

It has nothing to do with being intimidated and everything to do with being driven off by its inanity. The point of death was just a convenient excuse to give up on something that wasn't drawing us in. If I found it at all interesting, I promise that I wouldn't have stopped just because I was confused or because I died.

 

EDIT: Hey what shammack said.

 

EDIT EDIT: Also I just want to make sure everyone knows I'm not being dismissive of people's appreciation for the game. Fuck knows I love some shit ain't nobody else in the world appreciates! Like I said, I can't like everything. U:

[clyde]

Just a heads up, Porpentine's latest is amazing.

http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/tycoon/crime.html

You'll need this: http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/tycoon/nfo.png

 

And you should also check out the earlier Howling Dogs if you somehow missed it: http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/howlingdogs/howlingdogs.html#2o

Super enjoying this. I'm not finished, but I just had to mention my affection for this spoiler because it has relevance to the Episode 115 thread:

I just smashed a vase to get some money in a traditional video game within a non-traditional video game. That was great.

15 minutes later: I enjoyed what I saw, but I'm now stuck enough that I have no interest in figuring it out. I really enjoyed the Cronenberg/Cyberlust atmosphere of the video game, including it's options. It was really interesting

 

[TychoCelchuuu]

You really ought to finish it. What part are you stuck on? Have you tried changing the difficulty?

[clyde]

Sorry for spoilers, I'm on my phone. Don't read this.

I explored everthing I think I could, unlocked the shareware. I'm at like $... I don't remember how much money. I couldn't buy anything at the oasis or jump high enough, the trash priest keeps killing me. I tried to shut down PorCorp (that was my favorite section)

It's hard to say "where I am"

I did try to set the difficulty to easy, but it still wouldn't let me pass the bees.

I have a hard time imagining myself playing through what I already did again. It was fun, I rarely complete games.

[Patrick R]

I think subversions of interactive fiction like Ultra Business Tycoon III are important and a good thing to exist, but there is nothing about it that I found appealing at all. In general, I think I just have a very different sense of humor than Porpentine, though I have often found the games they make to be enlightening and worthwhile experiences. But UBT3 is just too much for me.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Sorry for spoilers, I'm on my phone. Don't read this.

I explored everthing I think I could, unlocked the shareware. I'm at like $... I don't remember how much money. I couldn't buy anything at the oasis or jump high enough, the trash priest keeps killing me. I tried to shut down PorCorp (that was my favorite section)

It's hard to say "where I am"

I did try to set the difficulty to easy, but it still wouldn't let me pass the bees.

I have a hard time imagining myself playing through what I already did again. It was fun, I rarely complete games.

Setting the difficulty to easy won't help you with the bees. Read the difficulty selection screen more closely. You're like 10 minutes away from beating it.

[youmeyou]

Just a heads up, Porpentine's latest is amazing.

http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/tycoon/crime.html

You'll need this: http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/tycoon/nfo.png

 

And you should also check out the earlier Howling Dogs if you somehow missed it: http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/howlingdogs/howlingdogs.html#2o

 

thanks for bringing these to my attention juv3nal. Howling Dogs is incredible. And I'm still in the midst of Business Tycoon and quite enjoying it.

 

The language is so colorfully descriptive that I think these games stand alongside KRZ just fine. (In fact KRZ's text-only parts are some of my favorite moments of the game. That bait and tackle shop!) I agree that if you hate the writing style you won't get much out of this, though.

[youmeyou]

Damn, that ending was great.

[clyde]

For those of you who have a difficulty with the wroting style, I may have a solution, but I'm having a hard time linking to it.

Before playing the Business Tycoon game, you should spend about 15 minutes reading some of brion gysin's cut-up poems. When I read Brion Gysin's cut-up poems such as I Am That I Am

http://glia.ca/conu/digitalPoetics/prehistoric-blog/2008/07/16/1960-brion-gysin-i-am-that-i-am/

it breaks my associative mind and I start reading each word without the context of the words near it. Then mere pairings become exponential potentials of meanings. In other words, it slows your reading down.

No, I still haven't finished it even though the ending is supposedly really good.